A stubborn impulse, reflex in the spine,
admits no conscious conscience or a choice
between your flow’ring dogwood and my pine.
…From crocus, saffron; reticence, a voice.
Great Mouth of Truth, your tongue beyond my ken,
I offer you my hand, should fiction bite:
“I hurt you once; I’d hurt you once again…!”
From sight, take fright, and scurry out of flight.
Two people get my jokes, on planet Earth,
and neither will explain the punch to me.
It tastes of cherries, death, and Jesus’ birth,
but can’t decide the man he wants to be.
Is he a nut? Is he a Russian spy?
Is this a swindle, or a true good buy?

I could not tell you
from my deaf imagining
if I heard its voice.

Our ears are played on daily.
Shadows disappear at night.

So long, I have lived
unsure of me, in the dark.
I saw you, and knew.

One thing, to see another,
must open its eyes and look.

I saw someone I knew.
I quietly heard her speak.
The jokes made sense, after.

If our breathing in
hurts the rare air in the room,
open a window.

Perhaps, through a slit, a crack
in what can’t, we can breathe free.

You owe God nothing.
“They” cannot need us at all.
The universe ends.

It will not, in an epoch.
How short need an epoch be?

At two years old, I failed
to reach the potty in time.
My only Mom “forgave” me.

I study Her form
for my snow white angles,
cold, blunt thievery.

This weather is farcical.
You should hear it on the news.

It’s not that the globe
isn’t on fire, today,
nor haven’t I smoked.

It is not my time to blow
rings in the face of my death.

I’ve never listened
to those who have insisted
it’s time to give up.

In a moment of weakness,
I would hide from your power.

Formalities exchanged,
sympathies given back,
Your absence would remain.

One rainy morning,
lying beneath the cool sheets,
no one will hear me.

It is not your fault, in truth,
that I have damaged my voice.

Some rain has to fall;
sunny days are not enough
for flowers to grow.

At black January’s end,
we should expect two cold months.

I know the T-shirts
bother my peers as much as
me wearing a coat.

It would taste

like artificial cherry syrup,

it would look

like FD&C Blue #1,

(“the flavor of technology,”)

if my words were sweet cane to your eyes,

if they cooed like

the perfect mother

in your burning, innocent ears,

nursery rhymes

with no higher ambition

than for you to be happy,

with the mouthfeel

of a candy shell

rather than the alkalinity

of a bitter vegetable

“mom” made you eat.

At glance, askance, too brightly might you shine

for eyes affixed to seer’s shadows cast;

when sun, to moon, to earth, perchance, align;

that cry for moments dead before they’ve passed.

Amaterasu, Freya, or Khebat?

Divine, I would, by cards, or runes, or tea

a seat in Heaven, (standing in Duat,)

for you, a might you might not want to be.

My breath is inappropriate; my lips

are pursed around the gnashing of my teeth.

Perhaps, a poet shouldn’t dance for tips.

Perhaps, your God’s above and mine’s beneath.

The virtue of my angles is “to cut”

where reticence and augury abut.

Armies of crickets
advance, retreat, and regroup,
but won’t surrender.

Heat relents. The first leaves fall.
I will yield when the sun dies.

You said, “I cannot,”
your back turned to the sunset.
Then, you were silent.

I stared til my eyes burned out.
Blind, I threw rocks at the sun.

I did not expect
to upend Heaven’s order;
it’s a chance in Hell.

Tell me God decrees winter;
tell me seasons cannot change!

Tides change direction,
on the Normandy beaches.
It couldn’t happen.

I counted to a hundred, just to stop,
and then wrote one unnecessary word.
I sent a metered pun, to have it flop
upon a hundred ears that hadn’t heard,
that didn’t know the back end from the front,
who thought a sonnet had to come with rings,
and thought that Cyrano should bear the brunt
of words betrothed to forth-and-backward kings.
I’m sorry, but I’m running out of rhymes.
This never worked, and now it’s time to quit.
I gave the form my head a hundred times;
I have to either swallow, now, or spit.
You caught me on the day I dumped the sonnet.
To be or not, not one bee missed her bonnet.

The sun stays up late,
listening to the birds’ songs,
like a teen dressed black.

Isn’t it past your bedtime?
How old do I have to be?

Even the robins
chide the “old boy” to grow up.
Master your tongue, first.

I am unsure, like wading
headfirst in the Lethe’s head.

I have two tokens.
I don’t know if I earned them;
Charon doesn’t care.

Where is the ferry destined?
Can a friend take my silver?

Two cents for your eyes
are your first, most basic right,
but keep them open!

One cannot choose their own birth,
nor ask the unborn, “To be?”

The father of life
leaves us without light or heat.
Mother, where are you?

I do not hear your children,
just their toys speeding away.

Accelerating
too fast down a slow, dark road,
we’re easy to miss.

It’s true: the greater our speed,
the less our perfect clocks tick.

A young, naive heart
sees one too many sunsets
and ceases beating.

This is not how it all ends,
a false light in the tunnel.

The morning after,
you might rise, with wounds stitched shut,
whether you want to.